


There is Nothing Alive (More Agonized Than Man)

by anawfulybigadventure



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 08:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18587947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawfulybigadventure/pseuds/anawfulybigadventure
Summary: could’ve happened to a perfectly adjusted jounin.Kakashi and his thoughts throughout the canon verse (or my interpretation of it).





	There is Nothing Alive (More Agonized Than Man)

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever like think about Kakashi's life (including what _that ending_ meant for him), and just *clenches fist* have feelings about it?
> 
> title from Homer, Iliad.

When Third gives him the file, the information inside punches him in the gut. He thinks he should’ve expected it, and is a fool to be unprepared. An uncontrolled part of him counted the age of Minato’s kid, the information always there for him, no matter how unwanted.

Yes, he should’ve expected to be given Minato’s child to be teaching, and it was stupid of him to still be surprised. Hiruzen is the man ruthless in his actions, and has enough depravity to consider doing something like that a help.

But, Kakashi stands his ground, he could barely expect to be given Itachi’s brother. Is this team made specifically to torture him? Last Uchiha and Minato’s child, and both together.

Should he ask Hiruzen, he’ll reply that he is the best to help a boy with sharingan and one of few strong enough to control Nine-Tailed, and it will make perfect sense - how he ended up with being given the relics of the past that still haunt him, _could’ve happened to a perfectly adjusted jounin._

He looks at the girl, her excellent marks. She looks sweet. With Kakashi’s luck, and Third’s cruelty, she is going to be a vivid shadow of Rin.

 

 

 

He watches them, and then he meets them, and he does Minato’s test on them and they pass, and he starts teaching him, and if the torture has begun inside him, Kakashi is too disconnected from his emotions to feel it.

It starts hitting him about a week after he started teaching them. He thinks he knows them now, they are so different from what he expected that he’s forgotten all their legacy and how he is entrapped in their pasts.

When he first met them and learnt them, he forgot his dreads. Sasuke with his burning desire to avenge, not at all like Obito, Naruto, Kushina’s temper, but a greater clown than his parents ever been in Kakashi’s memories, and Sakura absolutely nothing like Rin - they are not the shadows of the past.

But, sometimes, he’ll notice something - Naruto will move in the action and Kakashi will capture a vision of the yellow flash, Sasuke will bring the food with him and the smell of spiced vegetables will take Kakashi back to the time he visited Obito’s house, “Uchiha’s special” - his mother would say placing the food in front of them. And Sakura is nothing like Rin, absolutely nothing, but he sees her infatuation with Sasuke and will think of Rin and Obito’s lost chance at love.

 

 

 

“How are your kids?” - Kurenai asks from Asuma’s half-hug. Asuma calls for more drinks for their table. Sometimes when Kakashi third-wheels them, and it became a more often thing since they all got the genins of one age, he imagines that this discomfort is what he’d feel when Obito and Rin would’ve started dating.

“Worst,” - Kakashi answers.

Asuma chortles.

“Mine are the worst,” - he says it, bragging.

Kurenai looks at them both, scandalized. Kakashi remembers that this is the first team she's received.

“How dare you? Mine are angels,” - she coos, just remembering.

She's gotten Hyuga, Kakashi knows. Guy told him when heir from the main line graduated.

“How is Hiashi?” - Kakashi knows where to strike because Kurenai makes the sour face.

“Ugh. Let’s rather talk of your worst teams.”

“Yeah, we established that Kurenai got the best one, now we need to know who’s got the worst one,” - Asuma smiles, ready to win.

Kakashi tries to remember what he knows of Asuma’s team. Ino-Shika-Chou heirs, he believes.

“One of mine plans to murder his brother,” - he drops, and Asuma and Kurenai exchange worried glances - they both know who he is talking about and who is the brother he plans to kill, but Kakashi is here for the win, and he aims for the kill.

He thinks of thousands of complaints to say next - one of them has a monster inside them, and the last time he’s been with Jinchuuruki, he’s killed the sweetest girl in the world, one of them activated sharingan during the bloodiest page of Konoha’s history, the massacre he might’ve been able to prevent, one of them is angry he doesn’t have the parents when the person who could’ve sacrificed himself to let his father live sits in front of him, one of them loves Uchiha, selflessly and without abandon, as if unaware that in their world she can’t just open her heart like that to be teared out, even Uchihas die, they all can die young, they all are pure and children and Kakashi loves them so much already, but they are so eager to fight like they wouldn’t die in that fight. And he can teach them alright, but who but Kakashi knows the lesson learned so cruelly - no matter how capable they are to be, no matter how prepared, no matter how strong, this world will swallow them whole and leave them wretched. How is he supposed to teach them, knowing that?

“I’ll just take that second place,” - Asuma doesn’t let him spill out, and Kakashi thinks it is for the best. He’s getting too emotional.

“Tell me of your brats,” - Kakashi says to get Kurenai’s red eyes from him.

“Okay, so one of them is so lazy he doesn’t even bother to speak with me,” - Asuma sits more comfortably to tell them, proud and shining, looking as if they two were waiting their entire lives to hear Asuma talk about his twelve-year olds.

 

 

 

“You picked a favourite,” - Kakashi remembers a talk long time ago, but it hits him now. He wasn’t accusing then, only stating an observation. Today, he’d probably be accusing.

“I did not!”

Well, okay, he thought, _fair_ , Guy has enough love to sew this entire village green overalls.

“But he is closer to you than the rest.”

“It’s only because two others are very close to each other, they’d been friends before being placed in one team.”

He looked at Hyuga chatting pleasantly with the girl. Words like puppy love then didn’t rip at him the way it does now when he sees Sakura looking at Sasuke.

“When they make connections with other people, it is important,” - Guy tells him. - “It is also easier for you, you are less afraid for them.”

Kakashi thinks that he wouldn’t be able to be a team leader if Guy hadn’t been one first. He was almost wishing for the next genins to pass his test because he felt something close to jealousy at Guy that morning at the roofs as they were watching his genins awaiting him.

 

 

 

Sometimes, he thinks of everything he’ll be able to teach them.

The Third made him team leader, amongst other reasons, because he is the only person who can teach to the last Uchiha sharingan techniques. And then, he would crumble. Teach Sasuke what?

He’d imagine that lesson going - Sasuke, the sharingan you activated when your brother massacred your clan… Oh, I got mine when my best friend sacrificed his life for me.

Sasuke, sharingan’s special technique - mangekyo sharingan, something Itachi activated, will only be activated when you’ll kill a person dear to you. Well, yes, I do have mangekyo activated, I did it when I ripped the chest of my best friend…

And then, Naruto. So, Naruto, your father was a far better ninja than I ever hoped to be, but I copied his famous technique, I can teach you that rip-off. Oh, well, we can try to control the monster inside you, but, you see, we have to be more careful, it murdered your parents last time it got out of control. But don’t worry, they made me your team leader because they know that I won’t hesitate to kill you if I suspect the monster inside of you might endanger the village.

Sakura, proudly telling him she wants to become a medic-nin and of course Kakashi knows some medicine techniques to teach her. But he will never do that. Of all of them for her to betray him like that? It was just cruel of her.

 

 

 

Hey, Naruto, it’s so funny that you want to be a Hokage, because your mother wanted to become one, too. But it was your father who became a Hokage. And, well, it matters little now, because they are both dead.

 

 

 

No matter how vivid and full of life his students prove to be, Obito and Rin remain more real. He thinks of them as they were, but he also imagines them to be growing along with him. He tries to be as realistic as possible - Obito would inherit Uchiha’s usual height, Rin would look younger than them, her mother looked like her sister. Also - Obito would have one eye, his right side of the body would be deformed. Rin would have a hideous scar on her chest and on her back.

When, years later, for one blissful moment he’ll get Obito back, he’ll be surprised by how prepared he is to see him.

Kakashi wonders when Obito and Rin would start dating, and if, at first, he never allowed himself to think that they would break up, as he grows up and learns of relationships, he thinks that Obito and Rin should be allowed to grow up as well and to be living a life away from team Minato. Kakashi will never know what that is, but his best friends should do it.

But then, even in his imagination he doesn’t like them to be too away from him, exploring the world, so he thinks that when they are to be a little older, they would get back together, this time til the end. He doesn’t like the idea of Obito and Rin endings. He walks the streets of Uchihas’s quarters and wonders which house they’d live in. He and Minato would visit them there weekly, remembering the good days of their team. He is sure that sometimes he’d see them at Minato’s. Kushina would be furious at Naruto’s bad grades at the Academy, and they’d laugh at them two arguing, but the boy would be loved by all of them, all five of them.

He imagines what Rin’s life in Uchiha’s clan would be. Uchihas would be unwelcoming, and a girl from a regular family? Obito would have to fight for her. Knowing Obito, he would simply disown his entire family if he suspects that even one person is thinking about breathing too loudly in Rin’s presence. But Rin would be strong against the pressure of Uchihas, she’s always had a surprising amount of strength within her, and soon Obito and she would become a part of the clan. Kakashi knows that she deserves to live in the luxurious Uchiha’s house.

 

 

 

So, Sasuke, ~~do you know Obito?~~ Have you heard of Obito? One of Uchihas, my best friend, if he hadn’t saved me, he’d live to be massacred same day with your parents.

 

 

 

In the game of veterans that he plays with anyone when he is sufficiently drunk, Tsunade is the one that wins him. But he doesn’t know it, until years later.

She tells him: “It is hard when they are alive, too.”

Kakashi doesn’t think of it until he has to face the reality in which Obito was alive well into his twenties. They both outlived their teacher. Only this fact isn’t a relief. What were Obito’s years then? A weapon of Madara Uchiha, a hell without Rin. And only after that torture, death again. It’d be merciful if he’d died without seeing Rin’s death.

Sometimes, he is afraid his students will play that game with him. But then Sasuke could win that game against him before he got a genin rank. Naruto couldn’t but only because he hadn’t known anything of his past, something Kakashi does know. His only source of pride and hope is Sakura, and if she ever slumps in her seat next to him, he’ll just quit the village and walk the world alone, and never speak to a single soul ever after. He’ll never forgive her if she tries to play that game with him.

 

 

 

He plays another game inside his head - he wonders what would it be like if he was the one to date Rin. Kakashi doesn’t know how Obito would let that happen, and how he would survive his wrath.

And then, he knows how it would happen. Say, he’d be given a chance to bring one of them back. He can’t force Obito to live without Rin, he can’t get Minato away from Kushina, his father has chosen his fate and, unfortunately, he barely remembers his mother to crave for her. But Rin. Had he had a chance to bring only one of them back, it would have to be Rin. Not because he isn’t desperate for the other ones, but because she is the only one who’d be able to come back from the dead alone and not be a shadow to walk this earth.

He feels strangely embarrassed then by the state of his life - he’d need to throw off all his books, buy another apartment and not this dark hole in which he hides. But.

He imagines them both visiting Minato and Kushina while they were alive, the visits would be sad because Obito wouldn’t be with them, but much more pleasant than they were in Minato’s last years of life, when Minato was nagging and nagging him, worried about him, but Kakashi couldn’t really pull himself from the slump that was dragging him in - it was slow then, and sudden after Minato’s death. Minato wouldn’t spend his last years being afraid for him. And then, in the aftermath of Minato’s death, he and Rin have each other to care and cherish. Kakashi would want to take care of Rin, not as good as Obito would be able to, but he’d do his best, and maybe, with her by his side, he’d be able to care for Minato’s child the way he was supposed to. The two of them would take care of Naruto, Kakashi thinks he’d like to take care of the child, especially if he had Rin by his side.

She is the only person he can imagine dating. There’s no one amongst the living. Well, it’s either her or Obito, he’ll have them gladly any way he could have.

 

 

 

Kakashi thought he knew everything of their history, every little bit thought out and chewed and digested and over-analyzed, but Obito changes everything.

And what Kakashi can’t stop thinking in the time after, is the tiniest little bit of Obito’s story that completes the puzzle of their past. Kakashi understands that one little moment separated them from not becoming a tragedy.

And it haunts him from that point on - that little moment relived and changed only tiniest bit, and their stories changed. That needlepoint of the time towards which he strives to come back to.

Obito sees them two, feels the enemies approaching, sees them two arguing. And he steps out of the shadows just a little sooner. They tense at him, at first not recognizing, but then, immediately, both at the same time, recognizing their best friend. He is a miracle, the miracle they needed to end their argument - if Obito’s alive, anything is possible. Obito is alive, he is strong, he helps them fight the enemies, and even when Rin loses the control of the beast, Obito shows his new powers, and controls the Jinchuuruki. Village is saved, Rin is saved, Obito is alive.

And when the night comes when Minato’s son is being born, nothing happens, but the cries of Kushina and Naruto (and Minato, but only because he is a sap).

Minato, being the Hokage, will never let something like the massacre to happen. Maybe, he’d even see Sasuke running after his brother when he’ll be visiting Obito.

And he will go to his parents’ graves and will stand there and apologize that he hadn’t wished to return further back, to save them both, but he can’t keep thinking himself a tragedy when he has Obito and Rin and Minato. He knows what a hell the world is without them.


End file.
